I missed my period yesterday, so on a whim I dipped an OPK.  I read once they can be used as HPT’s but that they’re unreliable.  Awhile ago I ran out of cheapie HPT’s so I would sometimes use an OPK at the end of my cycle just for the heck of it.

Every other month they are negative, but last night my OKP looked like this:

I was like, “Uh WHAT?”  I totally expected it to be a negative OPK because I was just playing around.

I spent like two hours frantically considering that maybe something was way wrong with my cycle and I was ovulating again or something.

Thought about buying a pregnancy test but figured it would be negative.

Then I found a random old dollar tree pregnancy test in the cabinet.  I decided to take it with my diluted pee and assume it would be negative, so I could quit moderately freaking out.

Took it.  Then it looked like this:

Hmm…that’s not a shadow.  That line is faintly pink.  I’ve never had a dollar tree test with a pink line before.

I’m terrified of feeling miserable and sick for several months, and even more scared of another miscarriage.

But I could have a REAL BABY.

Due date is August 3rd, maybe.  That’s the same due week as Rosie and my miscarried baby.  How funny is that?

Tyler and I both agreed this doesn’t change anything about our hosting plans.  Full speed ahead with Host Boy!

He will be a good distraction for the first trimester misery.  I hope I’m not too sick to enjoy him.  I’m going to get Zofran just in case I’m miserable.

I kind of hope this baby is a girl.  But I wouldn’t mind a baby boy either, that would be new and different.

Mostly I just want a live baby and not a miscarried one.  I’m so scared I’ll start bleeding any second.

(For those of you who haven’t known me that long I had a horrible miscarriage at 12 weeks without any warning 8 months before getting pregnant with Ada.)

This is surreal right now.  I’m FINALLY pregnant after a little more than a year of trying.

SQUEEEEEE!!!

Also, my best friend is in labor right now with her first girl after two little boys.  (Rosie’s best friend Cade…remember him?)  Super excited for her, can’t wait to see her baby girl.

Very exciting holiday season so far and it’s just getting started!

This afternoon I attended the birth of my friend’s first daughter.  (She has four little boys under age 8!)

She had the baby at home, and it was a perfect birth.  All four boys were there.  Their excitement was priceless, I must share!

 

She weighs 8 pounds, 3 ounces.  She’s 19.5 inches long.

Hello, Baby Fever.

 

 

 

 

This time five years ago I was enduring a very painful labor, all back labor.  I was scared, nervous, and at the hospital.

My nurse was Alice, from the Brady Bunch. I promise you they were the same person, except my nurse Alice was less cheery and more brisk.  Her real name was even Alice.

I pushed for almost three hours.  My midwife was sick and in the end stages of cancer and kept having to leave the room.

Finally Rosie emerged, ever so slowly.  She came out face up. It was after 11 pm.  She just barely made it on the 19th of July.

I requested she be placed on my chest instead of the normal warmer across the room.  The hospital staff later told me Rosie had fluid in her lungs and needed deep suctioning because I selfishly asked for her to be on my chest.  They did their best to make us feel like the worst parents ever.

After Rosie was finally out of me the midwife tugged on the cord and the placenta ripped inside.  She reached inside of my uterus, her arm was in me up to her elbow, and scraped around my womb with gauze three separate times to remove chunks of placenta.  As a result I lost lots of blood.  Lots.

I refused blood transfusions and stitches because I just wanted everyone to stop touching me.

I was too weak to stand on my own for days afterward.

Then they took Rosie for mandatory nursery stays, so my first few hours after birth were spent laying in a room alone feeling dizzy and sick, and wondering if this was all a nightmare.

Thus began the hardest few months of my life.

 

Rosie right after birth.

6 pounds, 14 ounces, and 19 inches long.

Scrubbed to be disinfected from womb germs, then wrapped from head to toe so that I couldn’t smell her head or see her tiny features.

 

 

I had just turned 20 years old a few weeks before Rosie was born.  We lived with my in-laws.

I need a t-shirt commemorating my survival of the year 2006.

I knew better when I got pregnant with Ada.  I would never let the hospital bully me like that again.  I stayed home and it was wonderful, joyous, and perfect.  You all know about that.

It makes me sad that Rosie’s birthday is an anniversary of something that was scary and sad rather than wonderful.  Of course Rosie was worth it, but it angers me to know the same things are still happening to women at the same hospital, probably right now as I’m sitting here typing this.

Rosie deserved a better first few days of life.  I barely held her.  I didn’t get to hold her until she was four days old.  Not because she was sickly, she was perfectly healthy.  It was because of the mandatory nursery stays and Tyler’s family visiting non-stop.  As soon as visiting hours were over they would give the baby to the nurses, who would take her to the nursery to be observed for 3-5 hours.  Even when I begged for her back they said it was hospital policy.  I’m still so angry just thinking of it.  I was too dazed and weak to fight back, too overwhelmed with visitors who never left, too exhausted.

 

Fast forward five years and here we are.

Happy.

Can you believe it’s already been five years?

Some of you all were reading my blog way back then, when I first realized I was pregnant.  It was right after Halloween when it happened.

One day I was a carefree college student, the next day there were two pink lines on this stick and I was 19 and pregnant.

You know what though?  I don’t think I would change anything.  It was very hard, but I like where we are now.  I don’t regret dropping out of college.  I don’t regret getting pregnant.  Everything worked out in the end for me, for us.

 

Rosie at 2 weeks old and 7 pounds

 

Rosie on her 1st birthday.

 

Rosie on her 2nd birthday.

 

Rosie on her 3rd birthday.

 

Rosie on her 4th birthday.

 

Rosie on her 5th birthday.

 

 

 

 

At this moment last year, 6:30 pm, Rosie was holding her baby sister for the first time ever.

I can’t help but recap Ada’s first moments, copied from my blog entry last year.

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Pushing, in our bedroom.

A baby!

The midwife examining the mom side of the placenta:

She’s showing me the sac that the baby just came out of!

After the baby was born we left the placenta attached for several hours so that every bit of the blood could go through the cord and into the baby where it belongs.  As a result Ada is very, very pink!  She’s got all of the blood in her body nature intended her to have.  I had wanted to do this with Rosie, but the hospital’s idea of “wait until the cord stops pulsing” apparently means just cut it after about five minutes…before the placenta had even detached and delivered.

With Rosie’s birth something went wrong and the placenta ripped into pieces and got stuck inside of me.  I don’t know exactly what happened, but the retained placenta and resulting gushing blood happening again were my main fears this time.  I was freaking out about it in the bathtub during the beginning of the pushing phase of Ada’s birth.

I’m so thankful that my midwife is competent, patient, trusting, and most of all knowledgeable.  This time, after the baby came out my bleeding was normal.  The placenta detached but couldn’t come out all the way, just like last time! I must make sticky placentas.

The midwife was reassuring me the whole time that everything was fine and not to worry.  I’d already taken some herbs in tincture form (you can see in the video when the assistant gives them to me on a spoon) to help with blood loss and release of the placenta, just in case.  When the placenta wasn’t coming out properly I had a shot of pitocin in my leg, also just in case.

Then the midwife was able to gently work it out.  She said there was a trailing piece of membranes that had stuck inside.  It all came out intact though!  I didn’t lose a large amount of blood this time, either.

The only downside was that the trailing membranes caused the edge of my cervix to prolapse a little.  The midwife very gently put it back where it was supposed to go, and hopefully it will be fine with a lot of pelvic floor exercises.  That was my only complication, and I’m a little freaked out by it, but because of all the patience in handling things it was minimal rather than rushed and catastrophic like with Rosie’s birth.

If you’re interested in these sorts of things, here’s a 4 minute video of the midwife examining Ada’s placenta and explaining everything about it.  Baby A was still attached at this point.

After a few hours Tyler cut the cord.

The midwife took Baby Ada’s measurements and weighed her.  She also did a thorough newborn exam.

7 pounds, 6 ounces!

This was the only sad hysterical baby moment…

Hah.

That night…Rosie was thrilled to come home and meet her baby sister!

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I truly had such an ecstatic birth.  I’ll never, ever forget the joy.

Happy birthday sweet baby.  It’s been a wonderful year.

This time last year I was 39 weeks and 3 days pregnant.

At 10 pm I went to the bathroom.  When I checked my cervix it was about 4 cm dilated, but I wasn’t in labor yet.  I’d just had on and off prodromal labor for the past few days.  I didn’t want to have a 4/20 baby!

When I reached inside of my cervix to check for effacement I could fit my finger in to the first joint before I reached the sack of waters and the baby’s head.  Having the power and knowledge to gently feel the head of my baby still tucked inside of my body was absolutely the most amazing thing about Ada’s pregnancy for me.

I felt her head, the sutures on her skull, and the texture of hair through the slippery balloon like amniotic sac.  On this night I felt something else–it was her hand, on her head.  When I touched her head and hand, her fingers moved and her head wiggled in response.  She kicked me in the ribs.  She could feel me touching her head.

I took a long, warm bath with clary sage in the water.

When I got up I had some bloody show.

After my bath I laid in bed and updated my blog, saying that it seemed as if I wasn’t going to have a 4/20 baby.  I jokingly posted about bloody show on Facebook.

Then I fell asleep.

A few hours later I woke up with a start.  It was 2 AM and it felt like someone had given my baby an ice pick and she was using it to jab my cervix.  Sudden sharp poking pains deep inside of my vagina.

I lay there for a moment, slightly uncomfortable, but mostly annoyed at having been woken up from a sound sleep.

Then I realized my belly was tightening up.  It wasn’t painful. It was like a giant blood pressure cuff.  At the same time, I could tell that it wasn’t braxton-hicks contractions.  This was somehow different.  I couldn’t go back to sleep.  It was impossible to sleep through the squeezing sensations.

I didn’t fully believe this could actually be labor because it didn’t hurt.  I was thinking it could be more prodromal labor, just like I’d been having off and on…

The suspense created by the last few days of pregnancy is so intense.  Waiting to meet your baby, wondering when that long awaited moment will arrive.

I can’t believe it’s been an entire year.  Time has absolutely flown by.

My sweet baby Ada is going to be a full 365 days old tomorrow!  I think I might cry.

It’s been 8 months since the most amazing day ever.

I gave birth to my sweet squishy Ada in our bed, in the same spot we’re snuggling in right now as I write this.

I caught her with my own two hands while the midwife stood back and made the video.

I did it!  I grew her in my womb, felt the top of her head inside of me as I dilated, and I was the first person to hold her.

The other day I almost rear ended someone because I was remembering the day Ada was born and grinning like an idiot.

Today Ada is 8 months old.

How 8 months have passed so quickly, I have no idea, but here we are.  More than half way to a year.

She’s so different now.

At birth Ada was 7 pounds, 6 ounces.  At 8 months old she is 18 pounds.

She can crawl, and fast.  She can pull up to a stand and she’s practicing taking steps to glide around furniture.

Today she used a little plastic activity table to push-walk her way over to the Christmas tree and reach ornaments.

Ada is so smart.  I know, mommy bragging, but I like to write down these things for later.

She can clap her hands.  Her favorite sign is “all done” and she says, “aah duh” while doing it.

She can repeat things, even though I doubt she knows what she’s saying.  The other day on the phone I was telling my mom Ada’s social security number and it ended in 9-9.  Ada chirped, “nine nine! nine nine!” like a little mocking bird. My mom even knew what she was saying over the phone.

She also waves and says, “haaaaaaaaaaaai” and “baaaaaaaaaaaahh” all the time.

She learned, “Shhh!” the other day too.  She tells her singing giraffe and singing frog, “Shhhh!” and then throws them.

When she wants more she does a crippled version of the sign and says, “mah mah mah”

When she wants to nurse she does the milk sign and a fake cough, haha.

Her first Christmas is almost here.  I keep thinking, this time next year she’ll be so much bigger–helping her sissy decorate cookies and everything.

Time goes by so quickly.  It’s bittersweet.  Rosie was just a baby a few days ago, it seems.

(Her hair! I didn’t style it like that.  It’s getting longer and it pops up.)

The first part to this, along with her birth video, is in the previous entry.
For those who asked, Ada is pronounced like the letter A at the beginning. A-duh. Or Aid-ah, if you’d rather…

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Everything is going so smoothly this time, in comparison to the horrible time I had after Rosie’s birth.
Baby Ada knows how to nurse so well! She latched on shortly after birth and didn’t stop nursing voluntarily for almost the entire first 24 hours. My milk came in yesterday, and today I’ve got enough milk to drown an army. As a result Ada has spent most of the morning pooping, which is a good thing.
I still plan on trying elimination communication. As soon as I’m not as sore and tired! Already Ada waits to pee until her diaper is off. Instead of holding her over the potty I’ve just been taking off her diaper and letting her lay on the prefold to go. That way we can get a better sense of her cues right before she goes, you know?
So far she’s only peed once in the diaper, the rest of the times were when the diaper was off. I took off her diaper to let her pee yesterday evening, and then put it back on and we went to bed. I checked twice during the night and it was still dry. This morning as soon as I took it off she peed a huge flood! She was gulping milk all night long, I was kind of wondering where all of that was going…
Every time she has pooped it’s been as soon as her diaper was taken off also, except for just now when she poo’ed a bit in her sleep. I waited a minute, because I didn’t want to wake her, and finally decided to take her diaper off and change it. As soon as I took it off she was wide awake and she laid there and looked around, then pooped out all the rest.
I’m really excited that it seems as if we’re on the right track here. She does indeed have a sense of natural infant hygiene.

Rosie is a bit jealous, which is to be expected. She loves the baby a lot. She wants to help with EVERYTHING. It’s already a bit of a production to keep the baby diapered/pottied, fed, and clothed in those first few days. It’s even more complicated with an opinionated 3 year old helper!
Earlier while the baby was pooping Rosie wanted me to lay down and rest and she wanted to hold the baby over the prefold and wipe her butt. With her help we managed to get poop in a lot of places, like all over the bed, but oh well. Hah.
Rosie’s other problem is that she’s bored. I’m not up and cleaning the house, it’s cluttered, things are getting disorganized, and Rosie wants to do our usual routines but can’t. Tyler is trying hard–he’s actually being a real parent and I’m totally impressed. But he’s not really on top of keeping things picked up…like toys and trash and dirty dishes. I’m trying to not let it bother me. Next week, when I’m healed a bit more, Baby A will be tucked away in the sling and I’ll go through the house with a trash bag. I’ve got my laundry, dishes, and chores organized enough that I’ll be able to catch up over a couple week’s time and just get back to maintaining again. Thank God for that household organizing binder I made last year!

So far Ada seems much calmer than Rosie. It’s difficult to compare though, because of the huge differences between their birth and first few days of life. At this point in Rosie’s life we were still trapped at the hospital and I had lost too much blood to move, and we had a million non-stop visitors. Rosie was in the nursery and wouldn’t latch on to nurse, and my milk didn’t even come in until 3-4 days after she was born.
This time is so much better! I’m tired and sore, and the after pains are killing me…but that’s it. I’m fully alert and functional! I can walk and pee without crying. The baby has only left my arms for short periods of time, to be held by Tyler or by visitors who were only allowed to stay for a little while. I even took her back from Tyler’s Granny when she was crying and rooting around to nurse and his Granny didn’t want to give her back.
It’s so much better to be in our own home as opposed to the hospital and then my in-laws’ house. Aaaah.
I’m so in love with my sweet new baby! I still feel like I could wake up and this will have all been a dream.
Ok now for the rest of the pictures, which is the continuation of the previous entry!

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The midwife’s wonderful assistant took the pictures with me in them, the ones of the birth. I have some amazing pictures of her head coming out, but I think the video already fully covered that!
Pushing, in our bedroom.

After the baby was born we left the placenta attached for several hours so that every bit of the blood could go through the cord and into the baby where it belongs. As a result Ada is very, very pink! She’s got all of the blood in her body nature intended her to have. I had wanted to do this with Rosie, but the hospital’s idea of “wait until the cord stops pulsing” apparently means just cut it after about five minutes…before the placenta had even detached and delivered.
With Rosie’s birth something went wrong and the placenta ripped into pieces and got stuck inside of me. I don’t know exactly what happened, but the retained placenta and resulting gushing blood happening again were my main fears this time. I was freaking out about it in the bathtub during the beginning of the pushing phase of Ada’s birth.
I’m so thankful that my midwife is competent, patient, trusting, and most of all knowledgeable. This time, after the baby came out my bleeding was normal. The placenta detached but couldn’t come out all the way, just like last time! I must make sticky placentas.
The midwife was reassuring me the whole time that everything was fine and not to worry. I’d already taken some herbs in tincture form (you can see in the video when the assistant gives them to me on a spoon) to help with blood loss and release of the placenta, just in case. When the placenta wasn’t coming out properly I had a shot of pitocin in my leg, also just in case.
Then the midwife was able to gently work it out. She said there was a trailing piece of membranes that had stuck inside. It all came out intact though! I didn’t lose a large amount of blood this time, either.
The only downside was that the trailing membranes caused the edge of my cervix to prolapse a little. The midwife very gently put it back where it was supposed to go, and hopefully it will be fine with a lot of pelvic floor exercises. That was my only complication, and I’m a little freaked out by it, but because of all the patience in handling things it was minimal rather than rushed and catastrophic like with Rosie’s birth.

If you’re interested in these sorts of things, here’s a 4 minute video of the midwife examining Ada’s placenta and explaining everything about it. Baby A was still attached at this point.

I feel as if I am completely in awe.

Did any of this actually happen? It’s all so unbelievable, the entire pregnancy I’ve felt a since of disbelief. After my miscarriage I was afraid to trust that I could have a real live baby. I didn’t want my heart broken again.
Even after three healthy ultrasounds I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the image of a healthy baby. Once you realize that it can all change in an instant, it’s never the same again.

At 39 weeks I started having mild cramping every night that would eventually just go away. It was the same thing that happened at the end of my pregnancy with Rosie, except this time I was seeing a hands off midwife instead of a hospital midwife who used a lot of interventions. Since there were no interventions as an option, I was forced to trust my body and my baby and wait. I did nothing except wait, and enjoy the smell of clary sage which is said to bring on contractions.
On Tuesday night I went to bed telling myself that I was happy to have no cramping that night, because I didn’t want my baby’s birthday to be 4/20. In fact, instead of the usual nightly cramps I was having something else–a strange sensation in my cervix, as if the baby was poking away at it with an imaginary ice pick. It hurt, and it was annoying, but it wasn’t cramping. I went to bed excited about getting a full night of sleep.
At two in the morning I was jolted awake by something similar to those regular cramps, except with more pressure. It didn’t exactly hurt, it was more like a blood pressure cuff around my lower abdomen squeezing tighter and tighter until it pinched, then slowly letting up.
Even though it wasn’t painful, it made me wide awake. And it kept happening.
I was confused. It didn’t hurt, it couldn’t be considered contractions. When I was in labor with Rosie I was in pain. Serious, screaming pain from contractions. These waves of pressure were nothing remotely similar.
I decided to get up out of bed because I felt too strange to lay there and try to sleep. Instead I sat on the rocking chair on the front porch wrapped in a thick blanket. I watched the sun rise, and then I had to go inside because all of the neighbors were driving by on their way to work. I was still having those waves of pressure regularly, but they weren’t increasing in strength or causing any pain.
When Tyler got up he convinced me to call the midwife to ask her opinion. She sent over her assistant, who happens to live just a few minutes away. Her assistant decided that I was in labor. I was still continuing in my state of disbelief. I wouldn’t let Tyler call in to work for the night.
After a little while my midwife got there and checked my cervix for the first time this pregnancy. I was already 7 centimeters dilated.
I didn’t believe her, and I was certain there was no way I could be 3 centimeters away from pushing out a baby. I wasn’t in any pain! At all!
Rosie wanted to go to my mom’s house, so I let her…even though I didn’t think there was any reason for her to go.

The midwife and her assistant hung out on the porch. Tyler grilled burgers.
I laid in bed, spent some time on the internet for lack of anything better to do, and felt like I was wasting everyone’s time since I was not having any real labor.
Tyler and I went for a walk and laughed about random things. When we got back I killed some more time doing nothing and considered that if I were actually in labor (though of course I wasn’t) that this would make the most boring birth story ever written. I went outside and watered the chickens, sat and watched them peck.

See, boring. Labor is supposed to be intense and exciting! Considering that my entire pregnancy was spent in disbelief, I suppose it’s fitting that I spent the entire labor continuing to not believe it was real.
After a little while I got hot, because it was a warm spring day, so I decided to go soak in the tub and pretend that there weren’t three people at my house waiting on me to give birth. Tyler came in the bathroom with me and we laughed about nothing and everything. I considered that maybe the water would cause the waves of pressure to increase, maybe it would bring on real labor…but nothing happened.

Somewhere around 2 in the afternoon, 15 minutes after I got in the tub, the midwife came in the bathroom to check the baby’s heartbeat with the doppler. The baby sounded great, and I explained that I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be having a baby anytime soon since I wasn’t having any contractions. She laughed at me and I didn’t know why, because I was completely serious.
As she stood up to leave the bathroom there was a strange feeling in the lower part of my baby belly. It was almost like the sensation you get when you snap your fingers. Then there was a warm hot gush. It was so strong I could feel it underwater. My water broke…! It was clear and filled with vernix.
Now everyone was laughing at me–see, I really might have a baby.
I asked the midwife to check and see how dilated I was, because I was nervous that maybe I wasn’t in labor. Did I mention that?
She said I was almost 10 centimeters, there was just a lip of cervix left to go.
Disbelief. Disbelief. DISBELIEF!

I wasn’t in any pain up until that point. Just those waves of pressure. How could I possibly be almost complete!?! I kept asking if this was really happening.
Unfortunately this is where the blissful painless part ends. I guess the bag of waters was a great cushion, because once it was gone I felt extreme pressure down low. Not the gentle squeezing pressure, but the OMFG THIS IS UNBEARABLE sort of pressure.
Then I had contractions and they hurt.

This was unexpectedly difficult. I think it was because of the disbelief. I went from thinking I wasn’t in labor one minute to out of my mind and body labor the next minute. I didn’t cope so well. My distress made the baby distressed, and her heart rate kept dropping.
The lip of cervix got out of the way quickly while I suffered in the bathtub for about half an hour. This was the worst half and hour EVER. It felt like eternity filled with pressure and pain and no control. I was so hysterical that I made Tyler cry.

I started pushing.
Like, I started pushing out a baby even though an hour ago I wasn’t really in labor and for the past nine months I wasn’t even sure this baby really existed.

Finally (well, after that half an hour) I decided that I hated the water and I had to get out right that second. I needed gravity!
As soon as I got on the bed I was able to center myself a bit more. I was still in that crazy sudden labor place, but I could focus my pushing. I wanted to let my body push by itself only that wasn’t working out so well. I don’t know why. My body was pushing but I couldn’t just relax. In between the pushing I was still going over the disbelief in my mind. Tyler sat behind me on the bed and that really helped. I needed to feel his strength behind me, and I needed to grab his hands.
Finally I felt the baby’s head moving down. It was a huge bulge. It burned. I screamed…a lot. The burning and pressure were incredible, and not in a good way.

It was only 35 minutes. The entire thing, the pushing…only 35 minutes…
I thought it was much longer but the midwife’s records say 35 minutes. She was born at 3:35 pm.

Everything about that day was completely unreal.
If it wasn’t for this video, which I have watched multiple times already, I still would not be able to grasp what happened.
Being in awe doesn’t even begin to sum it up.

This is how it ended: I was naked, and there were bodily fluids, and it was one of the most amazing moments of my entire life. I feel like I should share it, only because there are no words with which I could possibly describe…
The password is [request it in the comment section].


So, it was real. It was all real. It wasn’t a dream.
Her hand came out by her face, and that caused a small tear…but it’s virtually painless.
I feel tired. That’s it. I’m not miserable like I was after Rosie’s birth. Instead I feel…empowered? Or maybe blessed is a better word.

Baby Ada is nursing at my side while writing this–my milk has already come in just 24 hours after the birth. She’s chubby and content and I’m still having a bit of disbelief that I have two beautiful little girls.
In my wildest dreams I could never have imagined anything this perfect.

Ada Lucille
7 pounds, 6 ounces
20 inches
Born on 4/21 at 3:35 pm at home in our bed!